The Bored Ear

There is a law in Exodus that most of us skim past on the way to something else, three verses about a slave and an awl. I prayed it once, in a season when I was set against God and knew it, and had come to the end of myself. It has stayed with me since as one of the clearest pictures of salvation in the whole Bible, and the more I have followed it through Scripture the more it has left me in awe, because it does not stay in Exodus. It runs through a psalm, through the mouth of Christ, through Paul's signature, and out into the life of every believer who has ever chosen to stay.

The garden

The servant is not a figure that appears late, after the fall, as a picture of what sin reduced us to. He is on the second page. "And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it" (Genesis 2:15). The Hebrew behind "to dress it" is abad, the ordinary word for to serve; it is the root of ebed, the word Exodus will use for the bondservant. Before there was any sin, the first man was put into the garden as its servant, with work to do and something to keep. Responsibility is not the curse. It is the design. The curse, when it came, made the work hard and the ground unwilling (Genesis 3:17-19); it did not invent the work. So when the Law later describes a servant who loves the house and will not leave it, it is describing what man was made for, not what he was reduced to.

The thread

It is worth pausing to see how far the word goes, because "from the second page to the last" is a claim, and the text should carry it. The Hebrew ebed and its verb, and the Greek doulos and its kin, stand on about 1,150 verses in fifty-five of the sixty-six books. More than the count, it is the roll of the people God Himself calls by the title. "I will bless thee, and multiply thy seed for my servant Abraham's sake" (Genesis 26:24). "My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all mine house" (Numbers 12:7). "Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the LORD, died" (Joshua 24:29). "Go and tell my servant David" (2 Samuel 7:5), twenty-four times over. "Hast thou considered my servant Job" (Job 1:8). Caleb, Elijah, Isaiah, Zerubbabel the signet, each named "my servant" in his turn, and, so that no one mistakes the title for a reward, "Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon, my servant" (Jeremiah 25:9). A servant is someone God uses; it says nothing yet about whether he loves the house.

Then the title narrows to one. "Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth; I have put my spirit upon him" (Isaiah 42:1). "By his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities" (Isaiah 53:11). "I will bring forth my servant the BRANCH" (Zechariah 3:8). The New Testament opens with a girl answering to the same word, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord" (Luke 1:38, doulē), and then the Servant Himself, who "took upon him the form of a servant" (Philippians 2:7, doulos, the Exodus word). From Him it passes to His people. The last book is addressed "unto his servants… by his angel unto his servant John" (Revelation 1:1), and its last page is "his servants shall serve him." Adam, Abraham, Moses, David, the Servant, Mary, Paul, John, and everyone in the house at the end. One word, the whole way through.

The law

A Hebrew who fell into debt could sell himself into service, and the Law put a limit on it: "six years he shall serve: and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing" (Exodus 21:2). Nothing owed, no strings, the door open. And then the Law makes room for something no one would have written into a slave code unless it had actually happened:

Deuteronomy repeats it with the reason laid bare: "if he say unto thee, I will not go away from thee; because he loveth thee and thine house, because he is well with thee" (Deuteronomy 15:16-17). Notice everything about it. The man is free; the choice is made from freedom, not from chains. He chooses out of love, for the master and for the household he has found there. He says it out loud, "plainly," before witnesses. And it is sealed at the doorpost, the place where the blood went at Passover, with a mark he will carry for life. From that day he is a different kind of servant: not one who serves because he must, but one who serves because he asked to.

And the same chapter reminds Israel why the law is there at all: "thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt, and the LORD thy God redeemed thee" (Deuteronomy 15:15). Every Israelite reading it was himself a freed slave. The question the law quietly puts to each of them is what the freed man does with his freedom. That is the thing to see here: the gospel is not bolted onto the Old Testament afterward. It is embedded in the slave laws themselves, in the release, the open door, the love that stays, and the mark, written there by the same Author, centuries before anyone could read it.

The psalm

Centuries later David sang, in the voice of one greater than himself: "Sacrifice and offering thou didst not desire; mine ears hast thou opened: burnt offering and sin offering hast thou not required. Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me, I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart" (Psalm 40:6-8). The Hebrew behind "opened" is dug: ears hast thou dug for me. Irenaeus, Athanasius, Chrysostom and Augustine read this psalm in the Greek, where the line is already "a body hast thou prepared me," and went straight to Christ. Augustine puts it plainly, asking whether we are left without a sacrifice and answering himself: "God forbid! But a Body hast Thou perfected for me." Later readers of the Hebrew, Jewish and Christian, have heard the awl at the doorpost in the dug ear, and the two readings are one, because the body prepared is the body of the servant who chose to stay. Here is a servant whose ear has been pierced, who does not come because sacrifices are demanded but because he delights to do the will of the one he serves, and whose law is not on a tablet but "within my heart." That is the bondservant of Exodus 21 turned into a song, and the song is about the Messiah.

The Son

The letter to the Hebrews takes that psalm and puts it in Christ's own mouth at the moment He enters the world: "Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me… Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God" (Hebrews 10:5-7). The dug ear has become a prepared body. Isaiah's Servant had already said it: "The Lord GOD hath opened mine ear, and I was not rebellious, neither turned away back" (Isaiah 50:5). And Paul says what it cost: He "made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant" (Philippians 2:7).

So the servant who would not go out free is, first of all, the Son. He was free. He loved the Father and He loved the household, the wife and the children He was going to gain, and He said, plainly, "Lo, I come." The mark of it went through more than His ear. "By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all" (Hebrews 10:10). Everything a believer will ever say at the doorpost, Christ said first, and meant more.

The apostle

Paul, who fought harder for the freeness of grace than any man who ever lived, opened his letters with a title he chose for himself: "Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ" (Romans 1:1). The word is doulos, bondservant, the Exodus 21 word. A free Roman citizen, a Pharisee of the Pharisees, met the Master on the Damascus road and never wanted to go out free again. He told the Corinthians it was the same for all of them: "he that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is the Lord's freeman: likewise also he that is called, being free, is Christ's servant. Ye are bought with a price" (1 Corinthians 7:22-23). And to the Romans: "being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness… servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life" (Romans 6:18, 22). Made free, and then, freely, servants. That is the order of the doorpost.

Two unprofitable servants

Jesus used one word for two servants, and He used it nowhere else. To the men who had done everything He commanded He said: "So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do" (Luke 17:10). And of the man who took the gift he was given and hid it in the earth: "cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth" (Matthew 25:30). The Greek is achreios both times, and those are its only two appearances in the New Testament. The servant who did his job says it of himself. The servant who buried the gift has it said of him. Both were servants; both were given something. The difference between them was never worth. It was the work.

That is the whole of it, held in one word. The door is grace and no one earns it, and the man who walks through it and does all he was told has still earned nothing; he has done his job. But he has a job. "We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them" (Ephesians 2:10). Works prepared beforehand, to be walked in: that is a house to serve in, the very thing the bored ear was for. The yoke is easy and the burden is light (Matthew 11:30), and it is still a yoke.

Two masters

There is a reason the Law says "remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt." No one comes to the doorpost from nowhere. Every man is born into a house that already has a master, and it is not the good one. Jesus said it without softening: "Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin" (John 8:34), and of the men who hated Him, "ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do" (John 8:44). Paul says we all "walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air… and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others" (Ephesians 2:2-3), and John says plainly that "the whole world lieth in wickedness" (1 John 5:19). We are born fallen into Egypt, under a master who did not buy us and does not love us, and each of us, by our own sinning, makes his service our own (see Born Fallen, Not Born Guilty). That is the first house. Nobody chose to be born in it, and everybody has served in it.

Jesus said the other thing, too, and it is the hinge of the whole picture: "No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other" (Matthew 6:24). There is no freedom in between. A man leaves one master's house only by entering another's. That is why Romans 6 is written the way it is: "Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness? But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you" (Romans 6:16-17). Salvation is a change of masters. God "hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son" (Colossians 1:13); the gospel goes out "to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God" (Acts 26:18). The first master held us by a lie and never paid a price. The second is, as I once wrote to a friend, "a God of order, peace, and everything that is good and loving," and He bought us with His blood and then, astonishingly, opened the door. The whole difference between the two houses is in that open door. The first never offers a seventh year. The second sets you free and then asks whether you love Him enough to stay.

Why this is what salvation looks like

Here is what the picture settles, and why I keep coming back to it. Salvation is not a man in chains being dragged into a house; the will is real, the door is open, the choice is his. Neither is it a man who takes the seventh-year freedom, pockets his release, and walks away from the master while calling himself part of the household; that is the "once saved, no matter what" that the Security page tests and finds wanting. It is a free man, standing in the open door, who looks at the Master and the family and says, "I love my master; I will not go out free," and then wears the mark. Grace opened the door. Love chooses the house. The awl is the cost, and it is nothing next to what is inside.

I prayed that verse when I was in opposition to God, and repented. I believed then, and I believe now, that God could give and take everything from me, "the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD" (Job 1:21). What He did instead was give me more than I could have imagined, "exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think" (Ephesians 3:20), my wife and my children among it. The servant in Exodus names those three loves in one breath, the master, the wife, the children, and I understand now why. They are not in competition. The household is the master's gift, and staying with Him is how you keep it.

The doorpost in three tenses

Read the law once more and notice that it has the same three tenses as salvation itself. It was: "thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt, and the LORD thy God redeemed thee" (Deuteronomy 15:15). The release is behind you, done, paid for by someone else; nobody at the doorpost is earning his way out of Egypt. It is: "I love my master… I will not go out free." The staying is present tense, a love that keeps choosing the house, morning after morning, which is the "work out your own salvation" and the "abide in me" of the New Testament. It will be: "he shall serve him for ever," and "the Son abideth ever." The for-ever is ahead, and it is promised to the one who stayed. Redeemed, staying, kept. Cut any of the three away and the picture breaks: without the redemption it is slavery, without the staying it is a receipt, without the for-ever it is a trial run. The same three tenses run through adoption, sanctification, the kingdom, and the resurrection (see The Three Tenses of Salvation), and here they are, three verses long, in the oldest law in the Bible about a slave who loved his master.

Kept as a son

There is one more turn, and it is the best one. "The servant abideth not in the house for ever: but the Son abideth ever. If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed" (John 8:35-36). The bondservant who stays is not kept as a slave. "Thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ" (Galatians 4:7). Jesus said it to the men who had stayed with Him: "Henceforth I call you not servants… but I have called you friends" (John 15:15). And the psalmist, who had already chosen, sang the whole thing in one verse: "O LORD, truly I am thy servant; I am thy servant, and the son of thine handmaid: thou hast loosed my bonds" (Psalm 116:16). Servant, son, and loosed, all at once. And let the Reformed reader have his verse, because it is here: "he shall serve him for ever." The staying is permanent. But look at the order the Law keeps. The "for ever" follows the free "I will not go out free"; it never precedes it, and no master in Israel ever bored the ear of a man who had not said the words. Perseverance is real, and it is the perseverance of a love that chose, not a lock that closed before the choosing. That is the whole difference in one doorpost.

Gill is a Baptist of the strictest Reformed kind, and even he will not let "for ever" mean more than the law means: the man's lifetime, or the jubilee, whichever came first. The permanence is real and it is bounded by the life that chose it. And it is the same "for ever" Jesus used of the Spirit: "another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever" (John 14:16), said to the men who would abide in Him, and followed in the next breath by "abide in me" (see Take Not Thy Holy Spirit From Me). That is the consistency that runs through the whole of Scripture and leaves me in awe: a law about a slave, a song about a King, a body prepared, an apostle's signature, and a door still open for anyone who will stand in it and say, I will not go out free.

Born, and then nourished, and the nourishing is where the servant keeps turning back to the house he was born into. That is Augustine's picture of the abiding, and it is the bored ear's: a birth that is finished, and a life that keeps choosing the door.

Where this lands

The door is open. That is grace, and no one earns the open door. What you do standing in it is yours. If you have taken the seventh-year freedom and called it salvation, come back to the doorpost. If you are in the house and afraid He will put you out, hear the Son: the servant who chose to stay is kept as a son, and sons abide forever. And if you are in opposition to Him, as I once was, and have come to the end of yourself, the prayer is three verses long and it has never once been refused: I love my master. I will not go out free.

And the servant is on the last page too. When the curse that made the garden hard is finally gone, the work is not: "And there shall be no more curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him" (Revelation 22:3). From the second page of the Bible to the last, the same word. A man put in a garden to serve it, a slave at a doorpost who would not leave, and at the end a garden restored, the curse lifted, and the servants still serving, only now it is the Son they serve, the One who was free and would not go out free either. He bored His own ear at the door of the world. Everyone who stays in His house is serving Him, and He calls them sons.

Related: Servants and Chosen, What the Word Says, and What We Believe It Means, The Vine, Lord, or Just Savior?, The Security of Salvation, Free Will and the Plan That Cannot Fail, Faith Is a Verb, Adoption, Repentance, and The Three Tenses of Salvation. Scripture from the King James Version, linked to BibleHub; the words of God are marked in gold, the words of Christ in purple.